Book Thirteen: Early Françoise: Françoise Grenier was a fifteen-year-old waif of the streets of Paris when a young man of questionable character convinces her to accompany him on an adventure to the New World. After more than a year of abuse in the wilderness of Canada, he disappears, apparently dead. Françoise is taken in by the few French women, returning to a civilized society. Having nowhere to go when the Kirke Brothers return her and her new French-Canadian friends to France, she winds up at the home of her mother’s cousin in Mortagne in the Perche region of France, and from here will, in fits and starts, build a new life.

Book Thirteen: Françoise Grenier: Of the people who returned to the new world in 1634, Françoise is certainly the most enigmatic. Unlike the other women: Mathurine Guyon, Nicole Boucher, etc. she has no written early past. For authors of straight history this is a dead end, but for historical fiction, she is a bonanza, a chance to spread one’s authorial wings. There are a number of theories about our heroine. Was she a native? is popular. However, I felt her subsequent life and history, particularly her many children born in a very French-immigrant fashion as opposed to the scant births of typical Indians of the time, made my version of her more realistic (at least in my mind). The remainder of her life is as well chronicled as any in this time and situation, and I have adhered to it as much as I usually do. This includes her mysterious death, for which you, dear reader, have a ways to go.

Book Thirteen: The Kirke brothers: These five men were French Huguenots who took religious refuge in England. They became privateers, basically pirates sailing under a government’s flag to raid its enemies (think Sir Francis Drake). In 1628 one or two of them did sail into the St. Lawrence River to take Canada, but when they managed to raid French ships on the way in, they returned to England. In 1629 they did return and take Québec from its founder. Samuel Champlain may have never seen it this way, but it allowed him to eventually return to France and build a force capable of taking Canada back, and with the addition of five hardy families from the rural area of Perche, France, make it a viable entity.

Book Thirteen: 1628: The Father of Canada is despondent. Samuel Champlain has spent most of his adult life trying to forge New France out of the Canadian wilderness—and he is failing. After many years of struggle, he has little infrastructure, few people, and scant support from the Kingdom of France. Little does he know that things are about to get worse.

Selected Works

Here it comes: Philomene’s Doll
Six years after the American Civil War ended, six-year-old Philomene sees her mother die horribly in childbirth. Soon she is sent from her home near Detroit to Belle-River, Canada, where, following a series of moves to various families and convents, she ultimately finds a stable home near the place of her birth and marries a young man.
Together they build a successful farm and begin a family. We follow her through Prohibition, the Great Depression, and two World Wars, raising a large and varied family through the best and the worst of times. All along, she is comforted and stimulated by a simple rag doll that was the single great gift of her childhood. Based on a true story, it’s a tale of the highest and lowest points of a long life. You will not want to miss it!
If you enjoyed 1634-Return to the New World, The Beaver Wars, Fearful Passage North, The Allard Series, or other novels by Dr. Kreis, you will love this one.

Gravely wounded at the end of 1634-Return to the New World, Françoise Langlois must fight for her life while the fledgling French colony of Québec must fight for its as the Indian nations enlarge their wars with each other along their new European neighbors. Follow Françoise along with her French-Canadian compatriots as they struggle against all odds to retain and grow their place in the New World.

An enigmatic young woman emerges from a life of bad circumstances and worse luck, finding herself with a small group of French families traveling to the New world where they will prosper as the early prominent families of Canada.

1704, the Puritan Massachusetts frontier: The small village of newly wed Elizabeth Price is raided by Indians. She is taken along with 100 of her neighbors and marched through the brutal snows of winter to Montreal where she must begin a new life.